Blue Sisters – Coco Mellors
From its first pages, Coco Mellors had me hooked with a gripping introduction — a bold, almost cinematic, pitch that lays bare the emotional fault lines of the “Blue Sisters.” It’s an unconventional yet highly effective opening that immediately invested me in the lives of Avery, Bonnie and Lucky, three women navigating the long shadows of loss and addiction.
Mellors masterfully layers their individual struggles while allowing us to see them through each other’s often unflattering lenses. The structure — long and immersive chapters — is deliberate. The sisters spend much of the novel apart, forming duos with Lucky as the connective thread, before a combustive reunion in New York.
[Spoilers ahead: only read on if you’ve finished the novel]
Avery, the eldest, is the epitome of controlled success — a London-based lawyer, seven years sober and outwardly thriving. Yet beneath her polished exterior lies a deep unease. Her wife, Chiti, wants a child, but Avery resists — partly out of personal disinterest, partly because her late sister, Nikky, endured excruciating pain in her quest for motherhood.
An impulsive affair unravels her carefully managed life, leading her back to New York, where she seeks truths about her mother’s lifelong disinterest in her daughters — and her own misperceptions of their childhood. Her eventual decision to walk away from Chiti and the life they built together is a moment of hard-won clarity, one of the novel’s many instances where Mellors resisted a happy ending.
Lucky, the youngest and most volatile, embodies chaos — compulsiveness, recklessness and a mercurial charm that both endears and exasperates. A model since her early teens, she’s spent years running from her demons, with the resources to do it effectively.
She’s written with an almost begrudging warmth — while perhaps the least likable of the trio, Mellors makes it impossible not to root for her. Her downward spiral, punctuated by a brutal relapse triggered by Avery, is a gut-punch. Yet, even as she reaches her nadir, there’s an inevitability to her resilience. A decade later, she’s still struggling, still wild, but surrounded by love — unchanged in some ways, but surviving on her own terms.
Bonnie, the middle sister and arguably the most compelling, is a former professional boxer whose self-imposed exile is shaped by guilt. She refused to steal painkillers for Nikky, and in her absence, Nikky obtained a lethal dose laced with fentanyl.
This grief manifests in a quiet, measured strength — she is practical and emotionally restrained, yet desperate for love. Her eventual romantic resolution with Pavel, her trainer, offers one of the novel’s most satisfying moments.
[Spoilers ended]
I appreciated that Mellors refused to canonize or vilify her characters, even in their ugliest moments — and that's no easy feat. This is a novel about addiction, but there are no morality tales here — just the messy, often devastating realities of dependency.
Everyone in the Blue family is addicted to something: the father to alcohol, Avery and Nikky to drugs, Lucky to substances and self-destruction, Bonnie and their mother to control and pain. Mellors handles these themes with nuance, resisting the temptation to blame. Every reaction — whether frustration, anger or tenderness – is fully earned.
There’s plenty of melodrama, and some plot points verge on theatrical (how are all the sisters so ridiculously successful?), but “Blue Sisters” never slips fully into saccharine excess or outright implausibility.
It shares thematic DNA with Ann Napolitano’s “Hello Beautiful,” a novel I loathed for its unrelenting melancholy. Mellors tempers her darkness with humor and an underlying sense of hope. The epilogue offers a satisfying glimpse into the sisters' futures, assuring readers that while they may never fully heal from loss and addiction, they will endure.
The audiobook narration by Kit Griffiths initially grated — particularly her interpretation of Lucky, which felt almost parody — but eventually, her commitment to distinct character voices became an asset. Accents, inflections and pacing all contributed to an immersive listening experience.
“Blue Sisters” is, in many ways, a Trojan horse of a novel — what seems like a light, fast read is actually a deeply serious and heartfelt story about grief’s enduring grip and the slow, often painful process of rebuilding in its wake. This will easily be one of my favorite reads of the year.
Rating (story): 5/5 stars
Rating (narration): 4/5 stars
Format: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: January 24 – January 28, 2025
Multi-tasking: Okay. The long chapters don’t lend to start/stop listening, but it was a great road trip listen with my husband, so listening is only recommended for activities where you can give sustained attention. If not, you’ll miss the beauty in the details here.
